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Dutch devoices all consonants at the ends of words (e.g. a final d sound is shifted to a t sound; to become 'ents of worts'), which presents a problem for Dutch speakers when learning English.
Because of assimilation, often the initial consonant of the next word is also devoiced, e.g. het vee (the cattle) is /h@tfe/. This process of devoicing is taken to an extreme in some regions (Amsterdam, Friesland) with almost complete loss of /v/,/z/ and /G/. Further south these phonemes are certainly present in the middle of a word. Compare e.g. logen and loochen /loG@/ vs. /lox@/. In Flanders the contrast is even greater because the g becomes a palatal. ('soft g').
The final 'n' of the plural ending -en is often not pronounced (as in Afrikaans), except in the North East and the South West where the ending becomes a syllabic n sound.
Dutch did not participate in the second (High German) sound shifting - compare German machen /-x-/ Dutch maken, English make,
German Pfanne /pf-/, Dutch pan, English pan, German zwei /ts-/, Dutch twee, English two.
It also underwent a few changes of its own. For example, words in -old or -olt lost the l in favor of a diphthong. Compare English old, German alt, Dutch oud. A word like hus with /u/ (English house) first changed to huus with /y/, then finally to huis with a diphthong that resembles the one in French l'oeil. The phoneme /g/ was lost in favor of a (voiced) guttural fricative /G/, or a voiced palatal fricative (in the South: Flanders, Limburg).
Like all other continental West Germanic languages, Dutch has a rather complicated word order that is markedly different from English, which presents a problem for Anglophones learning Dutch. Dutch is also known for its ability to glue words together to form very long words. Examples of this are de randjongerenhangplekkenbeleidsambtenarensalarisbesprekingsafspraken (the agreements for the negotiations concerning the salary of public servants who decide on the policy for areas where unemployed youth is allowed to hang out), hottentottententententoonstellingsmakersopleidingsprogramma (the curriculum of an education teaching the makers of exhibitions about the tents of the Hottentots), and a number with dozens of digits can be written out as one word. Though grammatically correct, it is never done to this extent; at most two or three words are glued together.
The Dutch grammar has simplified a lot over the past 100 years: cases are now only used for the pronouns (for example: ik = I, me = me, mij = me, mijn = my, wie = who, wiens = whose, wier = whose). Nouns and adjectives are not case inflected (except for the genitive of nouns: -(')s or -').
Inflection of adjectives is a little more complicated: nothing with indefinite (een "a", "an"...), neuter nouns in singular and -e in all other cases.
More complex inflection is still used in certain expressions like de heer des huizes (litt.: the man of the house), ter hulp komen (to come to help), etc. These are usually remnants of cases and other inflections no longer in general use today.
Dutch nouns are, however, inflected for size: -je for singular diminuitive and -jes for plural diminuitive. Between these suffixes and the radical can come extra letters depending on the ending of the word:
Dutch has more French loanwords than German, but fewer than English. The number of English loanwords in Dutch is quite large, and is growing rapidly. New loanwords are almost never pronounced or spelled differently than the original English word. There are also some German loanwords, like überhaupt and sowieso. Dutch also has a lot of Greek and Latin loanwords.
Dutch is written using the Latin alphabet, see Dutch alphabet. The diaeresis is used to mark vowels that are pronounced separately, and called trema. It has nearly disappeared from Dutch spelling after the most recent spelling reform, which introduced the use of a hyphen in most cases where a trema was used: zeeëend is now spelled zee-eend. The Acute accent (Accent aigu) occurs mainly on loanwords like café, but can also be used for emphasis or to differentiate between two forms. Its most common use is to differentiate between the indefinite article 'een' (a, an) and the numeral 'één' (one). The Grave accent (Accent grave) , when used for emphasis and differentiation between two forms, has been completely dropped in the recent spelling reform, so that Hè? must according to new spelling rules be spelled Hé?. This is, however, not noticeable in pronunciation. Other diacritical marks such as the circumflex only occur on a few words, most of them loanwords from French.
The most important dictionary of the modern Dutch language is the Van Dale groot woordenboek der Nederlandse taal[1], more commonly referred to as the Dikke van Dale ("dik" is Dutch for "fat" or "thick"), or as linguists nicknamed it: De Vandaal (the vandal). However, it is dwarfed by the "Woordenboek der Nederlandsche taal", a scholarly endeavour that took 147 years from initial idea to first edition, resulting in over 45,000 pages.
The official spelling is given by the Woordenlijst Nederlandse taal, more commonly known as "het groene boekje" (i.e. "the green booklet", because of its colour.)
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